After his departure into exile in 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte became the object of a veritable popular cult, in which his memory as a warrior, ruler, and upholder of the values of the French Revolution was celebrated-first by Bonapartist and Jacobin republican groups under the Restoration, then (after 1830) by the official institutions of the July Monarchy and the Second Empire. The Napoleon cult also flourished in literature, notably in the works of Balzac, Stendhal and Hugo.' The political and intellectual significance of this cult has generally been downplayed. French historians have tended to argue that the Napoleon cult was an ideologically heterogeneous phenomenon, and that while its public and popular manifestations were impressive (especially between 1815 and 1848), its impact on French political culture was not significant. There is also growing controversy about the depth and density of the cult, both among social groups and in the intellectual realm; a recent study has thus cast doubt on the real extent of the imperial cult among former soldiers of the Grande Armee.2 French liberals are another group generally thought to have remained aloof from the cult. There is, it is true, much evidence of